personal opinions and thoughts

NFC Extravaganza

What’s cool about the new Android phones is that they support Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. This was actually one of the reasons I got my HTC One.

Payments

I can now use Google Wallet to pay with my phone, simply by tapping on NFC-enabled credit card terminal. Hopefully soon every point of sale will be accepting NFC payments, especially after Apple jumps on board and ships iPhones with NFC.

Tap to pay is pretty cool, but I was curious what else NFC can be used for. There is the obvious tap to share pictures, or contacts, but what else?

I did some googling and came across this website: http://www.tagstand.com/. TagStand not only sells physical NFC tags, but also provides neat Android apps for interacting with the tags. One can read and write data to NFC tags, and later use them as triggers to execute various actions. What does that mean? What can it be used for? Well, check this out.

Car mode

Every time I get into my car I turn on navigation and Bluetooth, so that I can listen to music through car speakers. I also turn on the “car dock” app, so that the screen doesn’t lock while I’m driving. Of course when I leave the car I need to remember to turn all that stuff off. Pretty repetitive… NFC to the rescue!

I got myself several NFC stickers from TagStand and installed NFC Task Launcher app to my phone. I placed a circular, water-proof tag right next to the gear shifter. Now all I have to do is to tap the sticker once I get into the vehicle.

The NFC Task Launcher app is programmed to execute these tasks when phone is near my “car mode” tag:

It’s pretty awesome. I don’t need WiFi, since I’m on the road. But I want GPS, Bluetooth, car dock, loud volume. Just for fun I have the phone say “Car mode activated. Have fun but drive carefully.” The only thing to watch is space. The NFC tag I’m using has only 144 bytes 😉

I also use my car’s Bluetooth as a trigger – when the phone detects car is no longer connected, it will execute the following steps:

I never need to worry about doing this manually again 😀 Next I need to consider buying an NFC-enabled cradle; then I think the project will be complete.

Other possible uses

I can picture placing the tag at work for time-keeping reasons, or at the church entrance. First tap to activate the “church mode”, second tap to disable it (vibrate mode, Bluetooth off, GPS off, WiFi off, Bible app on). Although for these you could use a “geo-fence”, but constantly checking location brains the battery.

I promise to write more once I come up with any more clever uses for the NFC awesomeness.

Edit: I was hoping to use my phone’s NFC as smart HID card at work, but the frequencies do not match. Came up with an alternate solution.

Update: I found a good website (http://www.buynfctags.com) which offers cheap NFC stickers, as well as high quality custom made NFC business cards. Definitely a must for high tech companies 😉